


Looped In, Knocked Out

by voleuse



Category: Farscape, Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-24
Updated: 2009-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Your tales of school fights I stack into epic flights or trump with zombie stares</em>.<br/>Three things Mal Reynolds likes about Aeryn Sun, and three things he dislikes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looped In, Knocked Out

**Author's Note:**

> Set after _Serenity_. Title and summary adapted from Katerina Fretwell's _Trumped by the lady drunk_.

_Like #1_

The circumstances were mush, as far as Mal could sort out--there was a flash of blue and a crash, there was a firefight, and there was a woman with strong jaw and a stronger right hook who convinced him she could maneuver the ship past the darting ships he hadn't seen the like of since the war ended, years gone by.

_Serenity_ shook with a hit too close, and River told him it wasn't a lie, and between the two he was liable to take this stranger at her word.

He had yet to meet a pilot as fine as Wash, but when she rolled the ship, her shoulders twisting along with the helm, as if she wasn't used to the bulk of it, he couldn't help but whoop for joy.

_Dislike #1_

After they were in the black, away from the shooting and those pointy, nervous-making ships, Mal eyed the woman--Aeryn Sun, she called herself--and the bunch ranging behind her like a Reaver's own technicolor nightmare, and he said, _Thank you_, and _What the hell do you want?_

Through their entire first conversation, she kept her hand on her holster.

That was fine--Mal did the same--but she did it through their second conversation, too.

_Like #2_

Mal had no objection to a beautiful woman who could fire a gun. He preferred them, actually.

He also preferred it when they didn't level their sights at his left shoulder, which wasn't a perfect shoulder, he'd admit, but he'd grown fond of it just the same.

_Or I'll shoot you_, he did admit, was a powerful turn of conversation, and it left plenty of free time for things like gambling and the occasional fist to the face.

(The doctor was mighty peeved about all the patchwork he had to do, but Mal didn't have much sympathy for people who spent their free time talking to plants, whether or not they were life-size and blue.)

_Dislike #2_

Aeryn was nice enough to the crew, and a good hand with hauling cargo, but her eyes slid over Kaylee like she was furniture. Confusing, talking furniture.

"I don't think she likes me," Kaylee murmured, after the fifth conversation in which Aeryn simply walked away when talk of engines and rotations and catalyzers came up.

"I don't think it's that," Mal said, patting her on the shoulder and staring after Aeryn with a squint. "You want me to say something?" Kaylee shook her head, and he let it lie.

That is, he let it lie until Kaylee put her hands to Aeryn's own ship, and he found the two of them yelling like _taotie_ over the wing strut, and Kaylee wielding a wrench like a club.

Mal started forward, but Crichton waved a hand and a smile at him, and the calm caught him like a net. "Sometimes she forgets techs are more than hands," he said. "This'll help them settle."

"Settle," Mal repeated, and he flinched as Kaylee tapped the strut, rapping twice.

He spent the next ten minutes jumpy as a cricket, but when it was done, Kaylee slugged Aeryn in the shoulder, and then she skipped on over and gave him a hug.

_Like #3_

They hauled in the scrap from the battle, trawling with a magnetic net Mal would have to return to Badger someday, when it wasn't so useful anymore.

River crouched over the bits of metal and ceramic, murmuring like an oracle born.

"Read the bones later," Mal called out. "You think it's worth something?"

Next to him, Aeryn chuckled, then kicked a pile of scrap. "Only if you don't tell them where it's from," she said.

"You think it'd be worth less?" he asked.

Aeryn shook her head. "More trouble than it's worth," she clarified.

Mal watched River weave patterns through the mess, and a shiver went through him, and he said, "I know what you mean."

_Dislike #3_

Aeryn, he knew, had had her share of heartbreak at the hands of authority (he recognized that expression, felt it on his own face), so her fetish for rules and regulations came as something of a surprise.

It wasn't so much what she said--he got the impression she wasn't too familiar with the Alliance handbook--but the roll of her shoulders as she walked, and the precise clip of her voice. She felt like military, tasted of it, but only once did he make the mistake of asking.


End file.
